DOE's Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative (ASCI)
consolidates the modeling and simulation efforts of LLNL,
LANL, and Sandia National Laboratory, particularly with
regard to nuclear stockpile management. The labs form alliances
and Centers of Excellence with universities, for work on key
multidisciplinary research. One of the goals is to "accelerate
advances in critical basic sciences, mathematics and computer
science areas, in computational science and engineering, in high
performance computing systems and in problem solving environments"
supporting long-term ASCI objectives. This is done through
academic strategic alliance centers (over 5-10 years), strategic
investigations, and individual collaborations, with all work
unclassified and publishable. For instance, a center might
address scientific data management, visualization, or software
tools for terascale computing environments. At least five such
centers are expected to be started in FY 97 and FY 98, funded
for $1.5M to $2M per center for the first year (growing to
$4M-$5M/year). Strategic investigations will be funded at
$100K-$400K/year, for a total of $3M in FY 97. Individual
collaborations are to be funded at $50K-$100K out of laboratory
ASCI programmatic funds. .

LLNL has issued an ASCI Centers Request For Expression of
Interest and Preliminary Proposals, due 1/9/97. Preliminary
proposals should focus on how existing research efforts
integrate with implementation of an Alliance Center of Excellence.
Final proposals are due 3/18/97. Technical queries may be sent
to Dona Crawford , Dick Watson
, or Ann Hayes ; business
and proposal queries to Lynn Rippe ,
(510) 423-2176. [Merrell Patrick , 11/25/96.]

A GAO report found research costs at public colleges
and universities up 157% from 1980 to 1994, the fastest-growing
contributor to a 234% tuition increase. State appropriations were
declining during this time, while household income rose only 82%.
Indirect cost recovery on grants has been capped at 26% since
1991, further driving up tuition. [Robert L. Park, WHAT'S NEW,
11/22/96.] (I'm not convinced that government funding of research
and infrastructure is superior to industry investment, or to
"venture funding" or tenure perks by the universities themselves.
It's OK for the government to grease the skids where profit motive
is lacking, or where the government itself needs a service,
but easy overhead money only encourages growth of overhead.
The cost of research goes up because we expect it to, more often
than because there is no way to do research inexpensively.
The same thing happens to business costs or to lifestyle costs
if money seems easily available.)

Two UTokyo researchers have built a supercomputer
for simulating star cluster dynamics with up to 32K bodies.
Their "gravity pipe" uses 1,692 copies of a custom chip, at
a cost of just $1.5M over two years. [Popular Science, 12/96,
p. 32. EDUPAGE.]

For a somewhat bizarre analog processor, see Jonathan Mills'
"The Continuous Retina: Image Processing with a Single-Sensor
Artificial Neural Field Network" in Proc. 1996 Int. Conf. on
Neural Networks. Mill's chip solves the diffusion equation
(Laplacian) using charge gradient in a conductive sheet
(n-well inside a diode guard ring), sampled to generate
a current input to piecewise-linear functions stored as digitally
reconfigurable continuous-valued logic functions (similar to
fuzzy logic). Only the latter functions employ transistors,
on about 1/3 of the chip. The chip can be used as a silicon
retina or for any physical computation modeled by diffusion --
including certain neural networks (without neurons!). Although
not efficient for all problems, the programmable processors are
universal in a theoretical sense. [,
comp.arch, 11/27/96.]

Columnist Don Crabb quotes a venture capitalist saying
that Windows CE (WinCE) devices will fail to attract buyers.
People don't want small general-purpose computers. "As Apple
has proven with the Newton OS and U.S. Robotics with their
Pilot PDAs, you have to have these devices very clearly defined
and articulated. And porting Windows to them, is neither.
In a year, Windows CE will be yet another dead PDA format."
[NewtNews, 11/26/96. Bill Park.] (Wired magazine apparently
agrees. I heard that they've moved WinCE to their "Not Hot"
category.)

Mac clone maker Power Computing has licensed BeOS
from Jean-Louis Gassee's Be, Inc., to ship with MacOS on
every computer (exclusive until 4/97). BeOS has previously
been available only at . Switching between
MacOS and BeOS will require a full boot, possibly taking several
minutes. (A MacOS emulator is needed, and would allow cutting
and pasting between processes in different OS windows.) BeOS
is said to be fast and robust -- a worthy competitor for Windows
NT -- and has multithreading, preemptive multiprocessing,
and an integrated object-oriented OS/application architecture.
There's almost no software for it yet, and this give-away
by Power Computing will help break the chicken/egg problem.
(It also puts pressure on Apple to acquire BeOS or to come out
with an alternative. If Apple doesn't buy Be, one of several
competitors might.) Over 1K developers are working on
number-crunching applications in graphic design, rendering,
animation, music synthesis, speech and image processing,
video editing, 3D virtual worlds, and high-bandwidth network
servers. Gassee' was pleased by a comment that his Be Box
was "just a poor man's Silicon Graphics" after Be licensed
SGI's OpenGL industry-standard 3D application programming
interface (API), to be integrated into BeOS. [Bill Park
, based on Reuters and clari.tw.computers.apple,
11/26/96.]

Ike Nassi, the head of Apple's OS division, has resigned
to pursue other interests. [NewtNews, 11/26/96. Bill Park.]
(It's generally agreed that Copland (intended as MacOS 8) is dead,
with pieces to be released as upgrades for MacOS 7. Apple's
next hope is Gershwin, to incorporate many of the same features
as BeOS. It's still a long way from release.)

Acer plans to license the "WisdomPen" Chinese Handwriting
Recognition System from Motorola's Lexicus Division, for the
Taiwanese market. Lexicus has also announced software able to
recognize continuous Chinese speech. [iNews. NewtNews, 11/12/96
and 11/19/96.]

Voice Pilot is a speech recognition system able to transcribe
dictation (e.g., online chat) at 140 wpm, and to translate to
other languages. Available mid-1997 on OS/2, then Windows,
for $200-$300. Developed by Voice Pilot Technologies and IBM.
Rolph Rudestam, 909-585-6122. [Patrick McKenna,
clari.tw.computers.pc.software, 11/21/96. Bill Park.]

A famous result by Daniel Elkan showed that the two equivalent
logical expressions NOT (A AND NOT B) and B OR (NOT A AND NOT B)
give differing results under Zadeh max-min fuzzy logic. The same
is true of Lukasiewicz logic and probabilistic logic. Elkan's
contradiction is resolved in a paper by James J. Buckley and
William Siler, soon to be available. The key is to define A AND B
= A*B + r*sa*sb and A OR B = A + B - A*B - r*sa*sb, where r
between -1 and +1 represents prior association between A and B,
sa = sqrt(A(1-A)), and sb = sqrt(B(1-B)).
[, comp.ai.fuzzy, 10/25/96.]

Inform Software Corp. is offering a fuzzy logic Internet
server for their fuzzyTECH development system demos, benchmarks,
and literature, and for links to other fuzzy-logic and neurofuzzy
design resources (e.g., Intel's fuzzy application book, Motorola's
new fuzzy-instruction enhanced microcontrollers, and Wonderware's
new InTouch FuzzyModule). .
[Christiane Melcher , comp.ai.fuzzy, 11/22/96.]

Aptronix, Inc. has a demo of fuzzy logic in Java
at .
[, comp.ai.fuzzy, 11/23/96.]

There's a comp.ai.genetic FAQ called "The Hitch-Hiker's
Guide to Evolutionary Computation," at rtfm.mit.edu:/pub/usenet
/news.answers/ai-faq/genetic/. For genetic algorithms in GIS,
check out
or Tim Duncan's page on vehicle routing, at
. A good source on
genetic programming is Jaime Fernandez's "Genetic Programming
Notebook" at http://metricanet.com/~jjf/gp/index.html>.
[, comp.infosystems.gis, 11/19/96.]

Thomas G. Dietterich's "Statistical Tests for Comparing
Supervised Classification Learning Algorithms" compares five
tests of learning algorithms. He concludes that McNemar's test
is best for algorithms executed only once (e.g., because of time
or cost constraints); a new 5x2cv test of 5 iterations of 2-fold
cross-validation is slightly more powerful for repeated trainings.
.
[, connectionists, 10/16/96.]

Here's a useful application: NeuroDiet 1.0 asks you
to enter the foods you eat each day and any medical symptoms
you experience. It trains a neural network and can then advise
you on how your health depends on the foods you eat. (Are you
getting headaches from eating peanuts? Red wine? Aged cheese?
Something like this could also track weather factors and
pollen-related allergies.) NeuroDiet is Windows 95 shareware
from Stephen Wolstenholme ,
on
or .
[comp.archives.ms-windows.announce, 10/9/96.]